Month: October 2018

For proponents of raw milk, there’s simply no substitute: “No other health food is so easy and so complete to consume,” says Robby Lisenby of Sweet Land Farm. Fans of unpasteurized, unhomogenized milk from grass-fed cows say it contains more enzymes, fatty acids, vitamins, and minerals than processed milk, that it boosts immunity through its abundant probiotics, and that it can ease a panoply of health problems from allergies to eczema. You’ll often find raw milk users making yogurt, cheese, and kefir at home, too.

As for safety, advocates say raw milk contains its own anti-microbial system and is safe when good farming practices are followed. Government agencies don’t tend to agree, which is why you can’t buy raw milk in Virginia. But wait! There is still a way to access the stuff without keeping your own cow. A “herdshare” arrangement lets milk drinkers become the part- owners of a dairy herd, then pay a farmer a fee to care for the cows and bottle their milk.

At Sweet Land Farm, for example, where Lisenby and his wife Erin tend 17 cows in Franklin County, members pay $55 to buy into the herdshare, then $11.25 weekly for a boarding fee that includes a gallon of raw milk, delivered to three different Charlottesville locations. (Extra gallons are $9.25 weekly.) He’s been at it for eight years and, with 300 members, is beginning to feel that his farm is sustainable. “It’s a really hard life,” he says, “but we’re finally not at the point where we’re struggling every day.”

Like Lisenby, Ben Beichler of Middlebrook’s Creambrook Farm stresses that testing every batch of milk for safety is one of his most important practices. He and his wife Kristen launched Creambrook in 2017 but he’s been raising cows for about a decade, and now has around 100 members. To buy into his herdshare costs $34 and the boarding fee is $10 per week, including a gallon of milk. Beichler delivers to several spots in Charlottesville as well as others outside town.

Raw milk doesn’t only come from cows. Kathy Mullins keeps 80 goats at A Better Way Farm—soon to move from the Valley to just outside Charlottesville—and charges a $40 buy-in fee plus $40 monthly for a boarding fee that includes half a gallon of raw goat’s milk each week. Her members pick up milk right on the farm, the better to meet the goats.

Birthdays are always special, but growing up in Priya Mahadevan’s family of nine, birthdays came with an extra privilege: choosing the day’s menu.

“We always asked for this lentil and vegetable stew called sambar, with roasted potatoes and masala vadais, which are a fried lentil snack,” Mahadevan says. “Payasam (also called kheer) was the dessert of choice.”

A South India native, Mahadevan was raised on a diet of vegetarian, gluten-free, fresh foods from vendors who came directly to the house with a bounty of fruits and veggies. So when she moved to the area after a career as a political journalist, she pivoted back to what she knew best: food.

“I started my foodie career by writing a food blog that then led to catering orders and a stall at the City Market for six years,” she says. “I made South Indian food my business because Charlottesville did not have any representation of the food from my region.”

Now a caterer (“I pride myself on being the only purely vegetarian gig in town”), Mahadevan’s Suvaiyana line of artisan chutneys, soups, and spices are area must-eats. Below, we asked the cook to give us her own list of can’t-live-without foodie faves, from her cooking music of choice to what she reaches for at midnight.

Always on the bar: Port

Special-occasion drink: Champagne with Cassis

Energy source: My family and exercise

Breakfast: Scrambled eggs and English muffin

Lunch spot: Home, sweet home

Chinese restaurant order: Never had Chinese food in America!

Go-to comfort food: Rice and yogurt with sautéed spinach on the side (a typical south Indian meal)

Sandwich: Roasted zucchini, onion, and tomato with fresh mozzarella

Unusual ingredient: Asafetida

Healthy snack: Apple and peanut butter or Gruyére cheese

Unhealthy snack: Nachos

Condiment: Kerala black pepper

Chocolate: Marzipan

Grocery-store cookie: Trader Joe’s Cookie Butter cookies

Dessert: Payasam (Indian pudding)

Beer: Phoenix (Mauritian beer)

Ice cream flavor: Pistachio and coffee

Brunch—sweet or savory?: Both

Kitchen aroma: Cardamom and coriander

Always in the home fridge: Yogurt

Always in the pantry: Dal and rice

Bodo’s order: Everything bagel with jalapeño lime cream cheese

Salad bar toppings: Raisins and toasted almonds

Cut of meat: No meat for this vegetarian

Fish: No fish for this vegetarian

Vegetable: Brussels sprouts and zucchini

Midnight snack: Glass of milk

Knife: Tomodachi series

Appliance: Vitamix

Cookbooks: Ottolenghi’s Plenty and Plenty More

Mentors: My mom

Dream trip: Mediterranean cruise (hopefully not a dream for much longer)

Favorite food city: New Delhi

Cooking clothes: Soft and comfortable

Kitchen shoes: Flip-flops

Cooking music: Spanish Guitar/Sufi/Bollywood

First food memory: Dal rice mush oozing with aromatic ghee and a side of pappadum hand-fed by my dad

Best meal ever: Amethyst, a fusion restaurant in Chennai, India

If the word “catering” makes you think of starched napkins and green bean almondine, here’s another side of the business: casual oyster roasts, where guests can slurp down the seafood along with Southern sides like cornbread and Brunswick stew. Ted Anderson, of Anderson’s Catering, says oyster roasts (and their cousins, pig roasts and crawfish boils) are getting more and more popular. “We do them almost every week these days,” he says. About half the roasts he does are at weddings, but people also call him about birthday parties, anniversaries, and so on.

Not all oysters are created equal. “There’s 80 to 100 different types now,” says Anderson— “some very briny from the Eastern Shore, then you have James River oysters, which have no salt taste whatsoever.” Bivalves may be sourced from Connecticut, North Carolina, and many other spots, but his most popular option is also fairly local: wild-caught Rappahannock oysters, which he describes as having “just enough salt to bring up the flavor. I’m very proud to have a Virginia product doing so well.”

Anderson’s will serve the oysters raw or roasted, and offers around 50 different go-withs. You can go for full catering services, including setup, cleanup, and bartenders, or something more stripped-down. Cost varies with market prices for the oysters, but Anderson’s rough estimate for a full-service oyster roast with 50 guests is around $1,000.

Are months ending with R really the best time for oysters? Traditionally, yes, but Anderson says fall isn’t the only good oyster season. “People say that they are bigger and sweeter in the colder months,” he allows, “but I personally eat oysters year round.” And something about that half-shell puts folks in a party mood. “These events I put on are so much fun,” he says. “People love them.”

When Mark Thompson took his leave of Starr Hill Brewery in February of 2015, it felt like a changing of the local craft beer guard. Thompson was replaced as Starr Hill’s head brewer by then 29-year-old Robbie O’Cain, and other local new kids, anchored by Champion and Three Notch’d brewing companies, were growing at a rapid clip.

One year earlier, South Street co-founder and brewmaster Jacques Landry had stepped away from brewing, looking to take time to himself. And one year later, Devils Backbone, which had by that time surpassed Starr Hill as the largest local beer producer, was purchased by Anheuser-Busch InBev.

Thompson left a considerable void when he semi-retired from brewing. Not only had he essentially launched the local boom by founding Starr Hill in 1999, but his departure was veiled in mystery. He wasn’t commenting on the terms of the brewmaster changeover, and Brian McNelis, Starr Hill’s managing director and VP of operations at the time, was similarly evasive.

Now Thompson is back. Over the summer, he opened Brewing Tree, a low-key spot on Route 151 where he plans to keep things small-scale, with no distribution and brewery-only sales. It’s the latest brewery opening for a local industry still growing in waves.

The third wave

Thompson, who says any mystery surrounding his departure from Starr Hill was due to a non-compete agreement he’d signed, wants to look toward the past with Brewing Tree. He envisions a European model, making classic styles as an old-school neighborhood beer supplier, a place where folks can come from down the street to enjoy a pint or take a jug of suds home.

“The next transition happening is this kind of hyper-local transition,” Thompson says. “At some point, the consumer said success is a detriment.”

Thompson is likely referring to the backlash breweries inevitably feel when they sell out to big beer, as Devils Backbone did to ABInBev. And while DB has largely weathered the storm, other local upstarts are now tapping into the hyper-local movement.

Reason Beer opened on Route 29 last year with some fanfare. Founded by Patrick Adair, Jeff Raileanu, and Mark Fulton, Reason was named to Beer Advocate’s list of 50 best new breweries in May. And Fulton, who along with his co- founders originally hails from Charlottesville, had already made a name for himself as director of beer operations at the renowned Maine Brewing Company. The Reason brewhouse is small at 30-barrel capacity, but the team has launched limited packaging and regional distribution.

Taking things even more local, Random Row Brewing Co. is aiming for “a neighborhood pub type” model, according to owner and brewer Kevin McElroy. “We knew that when we got started, the opportunity to be the next Sam Adams or Stone Brewing was passed,” he says. “So many breweries had grown to that size, and there wasn’t enough room for more regional breweries.”

Random Row began dabbling in distribution earlier this year, but over-the-bar sales still account for about 75 percent of the business.

Meanwhile, both Champion and Three Notch’d continue to expand. The former has opened a new location in Richmond—on the heels of co-branding for nano-brewery Brasserie Saison on the Downtown Mall—and Three Notch’d has moved from its humble original location on Preston Avenue to a sprawling campus at the Ix Art Park.

Style and substance

Landry, who founded South Street with co-owner Fred Greenewalt, couldn’t stay away from brewing any longer than Thompson. Now brewing at beer nerd favorite Basic City Beer Co. in Waynesboro, Landry essentially never left the industry. After turning the helm of South Street over to Taylor and Mandi Smack of Blue Mountain Brewery, he worked as a consultant for James River Brewery in Scottsville and a friend’s establishment in upstate New York.

At Basic City, Landry (titled “master brewer”) thought he and head brewer Derek Hornig would be focusing on standard styles, much like Thompson at Brewing Tree. But the Basic City team has found itself moving in some trendy directions by being “open…and driven by customer interest and being relevant,” Landry says.

“The market now likes something new all the time,” he says. “We’ve just basically tried to make the kinds of beers that get people excited. Personally, I’m not an IPA guy, but I have an appreciation for the newer style with low bitterness and juicy hops.”

McElroy, who also envisioned a brewery serving traditional styles at lower alcohol contents, likewise believes in listening to his customers—and why not? They’re sitting right there next to him in the small Random Row brewhouse. That’s meant using his limited batch size to his advantage and experimenting with different brews.

“It’s been fun to see that evolve,” McElroy says. “But when you go to a brewery with 10 beers on tap and eight are hazy IPAs, there’s something wrong. We try to have something for everybody.”

Reading the hop leaves

Whether the local brewing industry focuses on the trendy, goes back to traditional styles, sees more nano-spots opening every six months, or sits back as established brewers go regional is anyone’s guess. Thompson said he’ll “leave the Coco Pebbles and donut beers to others.” Landry believes the “market will take care of itself.”

Smack, who purchased South Street from Landry and Greenewalt in early 2014, is similarly optimistic—but with a caveat. He’s wary of breweries focusing heavily on distribution, as the bottle shop game is pocked with “woes and difficulties.”

“I think the explosion of breweries on balance is a good thing. It feels like we’re restoring something valuable that was lost in America with the onset of Prohibition,” he says. “But with this explosion comes hyper-localization; even though there was a brewery on every corner in much of America back in the day, you couldn’t get eight bazillion different varieties of beer at your local grocer. [That’s] not sustainable.”